OH THANK YOU SO MUCH NICOLE

Ok. So it was sci-fi, pretty slim. Middle-grade, probably? I read it when I was in middle school, at any rate, and got it from my school library. A group of colonists, I think, on a massive spaceship, and there were these aliens they encountered at one point, who, like, nested in the huge atrium/farmspace on the ship. The aliens were sort of like moths, I believe, and they had a very short lifecycle -- the image of them all slowly and quietly dying has haunted me for years. It wasn't scary at all, just very poignant.

It was a YA coming-of-age book about a teenage girl, and there was a big scene with a makeout party where they played spin the bottle, I think? I also remember her talking a lot about this quilt she had and wanting to just hide in it instead of getting up. Lots of autumnal colors on the cover. Wow, this might win for vaguest.

Mine is I think a short story or short novel about a girl who sets a fish free. The fish lived in the small fountain that was set into the wall outside their house. The writing was minimalist, if I remember. This has been driving me nuts for years. I read it in the early eighties, although I don't feel like it was necessarily new.

Nicole's no. 1 sounds really like an episode in the last series of Doctor Who.

The one I am looking for is a children's book (pretty sure it was British) that had illustrations sometimes throughout. It featured Sky Pirates and twins who were separated at birth but they both had tattoos on their back, and when they were reunited, the tattoos combined to make some kind of treasure map. One twin got raised by sky pirates and the other twin was a bit more goody-two-shoes leading to conflict about who got the treasure, maybe.

Number 2 sounds familiar as I vaguely remember attempting to remember some of the numbers on the off chance it was a bit real and they needed a back up to remember them. Oh god I was impressionable.

I probably have more, but this one sprung to mind--- YA book, or higher-level children's? I read it in 6th grade & the librarian commented to me how it was advanced, so make of that what you will (level-wise). It was fantasy genre, main character a girl, set in that kind of fantasy genre time period that's like medieval only not, because it doesn't take place on Earth. Lots of mention of stags, like the actual deer? And tunics?

Worst description EVER

Also I want to re-thank the person who helped me with my lost book All About The Bullerby Children as I read it again and it's just as delightful and I cant wait to buy it for my niece when she is a reading person.

First of all this thread makes me happy: it exists because of the fortuitous ways books come into your life when you're a child and you'll pick up anything off the library shelf (the vital importance of libraries!), or some older cousin gives you all of their books, or you get something random at the Book Fair or win a raffle at the library. As an adult I almost never read something without having read all about it first and decided it's worth my time. Stumbling into books is such a wonderful thing -- but it makes them harder to remember later!

This hardly qualifies as a memory, just the vaguest of impressions that I can't even verbalize:
A group of brothers and sisters, possibly parentless, have adventuring related to war (WWII or else fictional) and there is a climactic scene in the snow, tobogganing, a secret treasure: hidden bars of gold in the snow.
(This doesn't make any sense and the memory is from when I was around 7, so I probably invented it.)

I have one that's been burning my brain for years. Girl's parents are obsessed with Shakespeare, name her Portia, but I can't recall anything else of the plot. I remember the character complaining that there are no good nicknames for Portia, which I thought as a 10 year old was pronounced Por-tia, so it didn't make sense to me that she wasn't known as Tia.

YA from the 80's? Something about a moonflower, something about living under domes, a character with really thick glasses, and another character that was a grizzled Private Detective type, which even in this completely implausible hallucinatory memory stuck out as being not appropriate to the book.

I also remember getting this book at my school book fair, which is not necessary to identify it. I'm just saying, remember book fairs? They were cool.

There is a child (girl? two children?) hiding under a house who is bitten by a rattlesnake and has to suck the venom from her leg? They talk about the leg swelling up?

I read this in 7th grade, so 1992 or 1992, and it felt dated then. It's our world, but post-technology - for some reason it was decided that electricity (I think?) is a bad idea - because war, probably - so it might be illegal to use it. There's a mandatory competition that teens take part in to decide status. The kids are divided into three teams, and two of the teams are more advantaged because the kids come from richer families. The hero comes from a poor family and so is on the weakest team, but he comes up with a new strategy to beat the other teams. He ends up becoming friends with the leader of one of the losing team, and they leave their community (or are expelled?) for some reason, and walk along a highway (at which point I realized that it's our world in the future). Anyone? I don't even remember liking this book much, but I'm curious what it is.

Ooh, I love this thread and I'm sad that I don't know any of the books summarized thus far.

The one I'm trying to remember is a young adult novel about a girl whose father is a famous painter, mother gave up career to have family. Girl attempts suicide, is found by her sister. Girl attempts to paint, tries to draw a portrait of the housekeeper's daughter. It's sort of terrible, but some other work by her shows promise. Girl also has a pseudo relationship with a student (?) of her father's. Father makes some comment at the end about a retrospective being done in his honor, saying that they only give retrospectives to people whose best work is behind them. There is the sense that he's passing the torch to his daughter.

AHhhh I just remembered a book I've been wanting to hunt down for the longest time! There's a girl, and she's a painter I think, and she starts losing her eyesight? And she might form a friendship with another girl who's already blind? The most helpful thing I can remember is that she paints a still life of lemons in a blue bowl and there's a very vivid description of the colours and shapes used.

Is number 3 not The Castle in the Attic? I just googled it and can find no mention of his mom in the summary, but I am so positive that is what it is for some reason...

OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY. Okay, all of these were published in the seventies or eighties, I think.

1) From early childhood: a rather beautiful series of illustrated books about a boy and a girl (I think their names were similar to Hansel and Gretel and that hers was Gretchen) and their adventures in a magic forest. I particularly remember something about them going into underground tunnels with moles or other such woodland creatures, and some gorgeous illustrations there.

2) Also for younger kids: an illustrated book about some place where they held a regatta. I don't know whether the characters were human or animal or blob. Something about it has always stuck with me, but in the most infuriatingly vague way. Probably it's just the fact that 'regatta' was a new word for me.

3) This one was pretty cool: a novel about a boy and a girl from rival families that practised magic. They might have been nobility, and I'm pretty sure they were Italian. I don't remember if it was a romance or a friendship, but anyway, their families weren't thrilled about them hanging out, and there was some kind of precarious event on a bridge, and then they got magicked into a tiny box and had some difficulties getting out for a while.

4) Something about a boy and a girl in possibly New England who hung out with a quirky old witch who might've been called Trudy. I think there were at least two books about them. Unfortunately my most vivid recollections here are of things like discovering US spelling.

When I was trying to think of books involving plaid and the beach for the person who asked above, I remembered this book about some family that lives right on the beach, a mother and a bunch of kids, and they're very poor but it's still sort of idyllic, and then the mother remarries, I think, and they have to move away, which really upsets the narrator, who's one of the girls, I think?

A picture book from early childhood, which in my case was early '60s. I know that was so very long ago, so maybe someone came across this book at Grandma's house? Haha, groan. It was about a family of pigs who were adventurers or something and in this book, they went spelunking. this was the first time I heard the word "spelunking" and also I think this book is the reason I still find anthropomorphic pigs so funny, to the dismay of everyone in my family. I searched for this book when my son was little, to no avail. At this point, I would just like to know if this book is real or if it was a baby aspirin induced hallucination.

A possible trilogy -- at least two books.

Probably came out around 2003? This was some weird dystopian-future thing, but it did not take place on earth. There was a boy and a girl that were on a quest -- to some sort of central mountain or tower -- and the boy, at least, had something with special powers, like a flute or bow. Agh, this sounds like every YA book ever. They were from a segmented society, and they were from some lower caste/class.

The covers were very cool, stylized illustration, the first one was all in red tones, and depicted the central mountain/tower. I remember the vibe was kind of like The Giver, and whenever I search for these books, I get that series called like Ember or something, but that is not this. These seemed a lot more sinister, and they were gorgeous, thick hardcover books when I read them. For reference, they belonged to a kid I babysat for who was also into Eragon.

I feel like maybe they'd be compared to the Hunger Games now, for whatever reason.

I have not been able to place these books for at least 5 years.

There was a family that had like ten kids, and the parents named them alphabetically, so the oldest was an A name, then a B name, and so on. At the end there was a surprise pregnancy, and they decided to skip the rest of the alphabet and give the baby a Z name.

1. There was this book I read a couple of times in fifth or sixth grade that I'd love to find again about orphans during the French revolution or its aftermath. Some of them were siblings, but as a group they just randomly banded together. I think it was set in the winter and some of the kids got sick or possibly froze their toes off.

2. While I'm here: creepy YA with two stepbrothers who have jointly inherited the genius of some composer. Maybe Liszt? One brother can compose like him and one can play the piano like him. And there are lots of severed hands. Some belong to dolls. some do not.

There is a boy who is truly excellent at that Mayan/Aztec ball game that vaguely resembles basketball: it has two stone "hoops" at either end and you have to get a tiny rubber ball into the hoops while the other team basically tries to take you DOWN, rugby-style. Anyway, this boy, he is awesome at this game and somehow there's a catastrophe and he has to go challenge the gods to a game of ball?

It is a children's book, and it had amazing illustrations. They were photographs of paper-cuts, the kind that are layered on top of one another to create perspective, and it was largely in blacks and greens and reds and oranges, and there is one scene where the boy is playing ball against the gods in a lightning storm and it's pretty kickass.

This is my favorite recurring thread. More of these, please, Nicole!

Here are mine:

1) Middle grade, pretty old book but I read it in the 90s. The main character is a boy and the title is his name. He is really into "dowsing" for water, or maybe oil. He is also into... inventing things? And maybe truffle hunting pigs. At some point these pursuits actually come to fruition and he discovers oil under the plot of land he's been exploring in his neighborhood. I think.

2) Middle grade, probably from the 80s or 90s. A group of kids are doing some sort of protest march, walking along highways (maybe to DC?). I just remember the very specific images of them walking along highways. They are carrying a flag with them.

3) Middle grade, probably 80s or 90s. A girl lives in a historic reenactment place, but Truman Show style, so she really thinks she lives in these colonial times. She escapes or gets let out near the beginning of the book and has to deal with suddenly being in a modern city.

This is a picture book that I loved when I was little (so...early-mid '90s? I'm not sure when it was published, though), but now both my mom and I are at a complete loss for the title.

It's about a little girl (I can't remember her name, but I think it may be in the title) who's visiting her grandmother's house, which is pink and set on a hill. There are plum trees all around and she and her grandmother pick them and make jam. That night, toys come out of the chest in the little girl's room and end up flying into the sky and bringing her back a blanket full of stars, but then it starts raining and the little girl thinks the sky is crying and the moon is lonely, so they throw the stars back into the sky. At the end it's implied that the grandmother knew all about the magical toys, too, and maybe did the same thing when she was young?

It's a lovely book, beautifully illustrated, and I read it so many times that it's driving me crazy to not remember the title.

WAIT I have one more. This was a middle grade book from those 90s monthly books-by-mail programs. I read SO many of those books and I don't remember any of the titles.

The one I'm thinking of involved a girl and her little brother crashing their car near a mountain in a blizzard. Maybe their parents crashed, and were incapacitated. The girl and her brother needed to go for help, so they used her rock climbing skills and random materials they had in the car to climb up the mountain. My strongest memories, although they may be fabricated/enhanced with time, are of her fashioning makeshift carabiners and hammering stakes into the mountain to hold the next clip, etc.